This disclosure relates generally to accessing data on a physical recording medium, and more specifically to enabling virtual machines to access data on the physical recording medium.
Modern computing systems may execute software (called a virtual machine) that emulates computer hardware capable of running applications. Virtual machines may be advantageous in that they can allow multiple system platforms to be implemented using the same underlying physical hardware. They can also serve as an effective way to distribute a computing system's resources among multiple applications. Usage of Virtual machines can also improve system reliability as they can isolate executing applications from underlying hardware.
Virtual machines typically run on a hypervisor (also called a virtual machine manager (VMM)) that manages allocation of computing system resources among the virtual machines. A computing system may implement support for a hypervisor either natively or as host. In a native implementation (also called a bare metal implementation), hardware provides direct support for executing a hypervisor. This particular implementation can be advantageous because it typically can run virtual machines more efficiently. In contrast, in a host implementation, the hypervisor runs on an underlying operation system. This particular implementation can be advantageous because underlying hardware does not have to provide any hypervisor support.